NURSE’S VISION YIELDS BEDS FOR HOMELESS AFTER SURGERY

Swain knew right away that such a facility would be much more effective than motel vouchers, and a little over a year later, on Oct. 1, the expanded recovery center opened at 627 E. Second Ave.

Swain explained that Palomar Hospital and Tri-City Medical Center are each able to send homeless patients to Second Avenue after surgery, with each provider contributing to the cost of care, according to the terms of the arrangement with Interfaith.

“It’s going to be cheaper to have these patients go through recuperative care than keep coming through the ER and costing a boatload of money,” she predicted. “When I was doing the statistics, there were some patients who would come into the ER, stay for three days, be out for two days and come back in. Like a revolving door.”

At the recuperation home, patients are looked after by a resident monitor who will also drive them to follow-up appointments; they receive three meals a day from Interfaith, and a nurse checks in daily.

Each patient’s stay will vary with the extent of their procedure, based on doctor’s orders.

“I think the vets stay about 90 days,” Swain said. “Palomar’s patients are going to stay for a couple of weeks, but I’m always looking for funding to try to fund them longer.”

For a veteran nurse who has seen it all during her 30 years in health care, helping the homeless has provided a new lens through which to view her role in the community.

“One guy had a calendar on his wall, and he had these little marks on the days — little symbols,” Swain recalled. “I go, ‘What does this little symbol mean?’ And he said, ‘That’s for every day I’m blessed by this program. If it wasn’t for this, I don’t know where I’d be.’”

“A lot of them don’t say much,” she went on. “That very first gentleman, when it was raining and he didn’t have anywhere to go, I went up and said, ‘If I could find you a place to sleep, like at the Salvation Army, would that be all right with you?’ Because I didn’t want to call and do all of this if he would be offended. He said, ‘That would be great.’ He wasn’t asking for anything — he was very shy, very quiet — but he was willing to have help.”

On that rainy afternoon in January 2008, Swain hadn’t been able to find an open bed.

“We worked something out,” she said. “We didn’t send him out into the rain. But … we need to have a plan in place before they get there, before it’s raining.”